One year of blogging...Looking back with thanks...

I wanted to write these some time in January in the New Year …that was when I completed one year on blogosphere … I was busy…very busy…and my mind was occupied with lots of unfinished work… I have managed to complete most of what I had planned satisfactorily… so I thought I’d get down to writing what I had wanted to … all of you would have noticed my fascination for fountain pens by now … it was in the initial days of this fascination that I got introduced to blogging … the early days of a hobby are days of searching for information; trying to gather as much knowledge as one can… and these days of course, Google has made it easier… so, while searching for information about fountain pens, especially fountain pens in India, I hit upon many sites…one of these was www.fountainpennetwork.com and among the others was the blog of a prolific blogger from Hyderabad … I made two good friends through these sites…I met Hari through FPN and Vinod through his blog (I got connected to Vinod through his post on Mont Blanc Meisterstuck FP; which is now my 'grail' pen!!)…

I tend to think of myself as somebody who is not easily swayed…but once swayed, I stay swayed…so, now I am swaying… Vinod’s blog inspired me to start my own blogsite and Hari’s phenomenal knowledge about fountain pens inspired me to stick to this hobby and develop my own knowledge base… I decided to concentrate on Indian fountain pens and I am happy that I was able to ‘discover’ for myself some obscure handmade fountain pen brands from my adopted state, Andhra Pradesh… I learnt a whole new vocabulary…

I started my blog tentatively and my first post was on my fountain pens…rather, a list of fountain pens I owned… before I knew it, there was more and more of fountain pens in my blog rather than books and music…my long-standing passions … and then I felt that collecting FPs and blogging had come together at the right time … I was able to concentrate on my writing and was forced to think, especially while writing about music and books … I had never written anything about music before and I tried it hesitatingly here… Shruti says my writing has improved…coming from her, it is high praise indeed, as she has always been a trenchant critic of my writing…

So, some good has come out of all this one year of blogging … I have, since those early days of blogging, met Hari and Vinod … they have visited me at my home (remembering my fascination with Mont Blanc FP, Vinod had thoughtfully brought his MB along with him for me to see when he visited me and Hari brings many 'pen' goodies from Mumbai whenever he comes to Hyderabad; Hari has recently acquired a MB Meisterstuck 149 and I am dying to see it...) and we have been interacting and have become my good friends… after leaving CIEFL, I have stuck to some of my old CIEFL friends and due to a variety of reasons, I could make friends out of only a couple of people from among my colleagues in the past 8 years…and when Shruti saw me interacting regularly with my new ‘pen’ friends, she was surprised and happy for me … Thanks Vinod and Hari…

Yellow Fellows...Celluloid fountain pens from Guider

I became an inadvertent recipient of some new celluloid fountain pens designed by Mr G Lakshmana Rao of Guider Pens, Rajahmundry. He was kind of asked to design a celluloid FP on the Duofold model. And I think all his red celluloid material was used up and so he used his yellow celluloid tubes to create these pens. He sent me four of these…these have no names, except that the 3 flat end ones are Duofold designs, and maybe called Guider Duofold … the one with the rounded end is the usual Guider celluloid design for that thickness and size…the red coloured one was the first celluloid FP that I purchased from Guider… and there is another brainwave design… the black ebonite with yellow celluloid bands…a kind of 'reverse' celluloid-ebonite design…

You can see the various design novelties in photo 1 …the first one has 2 metal cap bands…the cap on the second one is without any bands…the third one is the red acrylic with the usual Guider design with the flat clip…the fourth is the one with the reverse celluloid-ebonite design…the cap has a yellow celluloid band at the top where the clip begins and another yellow celluloid band at the bottom which gives the pen its reverse look…the fifth one has a black celluloid band at the cap lip…and the sixth one is a yellow celluloid in the usual Guider design with two metal bands on the cap and the arrow clip…

All these pens are ED fillers…if you notice all the celluloid pens have black cap tops and barrel ends…this design is an inevitability of celluloid pens manufacturing, at least, of what I have seen of celluloid pens made in India (Prasad, Guider, Wilson, Leader, Brahmam)…celluloid material comes in the form of tubes, unlike ebonite, which comes in the form of rods…therefore, while making pens, the celluloid tube ends have to be closed and ebonite comes in handy here…so, the black ends are actually ‘stoppers’… and what is unavoidable when it comes to making celluloid pens was converted into a ‘reverse’ design when Mr Lakshmana Rao made a similar Duofold design in black ebonite and put in those yellow bands at the top and the end… and these ebonite stoppers can also be strategically used to save celluloid material!!

I had asked Mr Lakshmana Rao to fix arrow clips for the Duofold celluloid FPs too… but for some reason, he decided to fix this elongated oval kind of clip, which I don’t fancy much …

These yellow fellows do look good, don't they?

Aye Laila-Misty Rhythms...an unusual music album

Album cover-Aye Laila - Misty Rhythms

Ramana Gogula

Kush Khanna

I accidentally found my once-upon-a-time favourite music album online…some blessed soul had uploaded it…and I discovered that it is still one of my favourites…

Music has this strange quality about it that flashbacks you exactly to the same time and place and Aye Laila did that exactly to me…I was transported back in time to my days in the hostel where musical explorations was a thrill and an adventure by themselves… Aye Laila landed in my collection as part of one such musical expedition…I was, maybe, a year or so into ‘fusion’ music and anything out of the ordinary was acceptable musical fodder…some were not ‘fusion-istic’ enough…some were ‘good’…some were ‘imitations’… some did not have what I felt was essential for ‘fusion’…an inexplicable thing called ‘namak’… Aye Laila had two totally unknown names…Ramana Gogula (then) and Kush Khanna…both were based in the US and had formed a musical collaboration and named their band as Misty Rhythms… Ramana Gogula would eventually go on to become a household name in Andhra Pradesh due to his ‘different’ compositions for Telugu films…but Misty Rhythms was probably a kind of portfolio of Ramana Gogula…Kush Khanna is a trained tabla player…and whereas Ramana Gogula, growing up in India, was fascinated by reggae, rock, and obviously admired Bob Marley, Kush Khanna, in the US, grew up learning the tabla and Indian rhythms…and they met in San Francisco and musical interactions resulted in their forming a band called Misty Rhythms… ‘misty’ being a tribute to the misty mornings in San Francisco…and ‘rhythms,’ obviously to the Indian, African, and Reggae rhythms…

This album was released by Sony India and at that time I did not have enough money to buy a CD, and therefore bought a cassette…when I hear those songs now, I look back and try to ‘see’ how I felt when I heard then for the first few times…this album had a total of 12 tracks… and for somebody like me who was exploring different musics, it was a musical treat…the opening bars of the first song ‘Aye Laila’ got me hooked…the song starts of as strumming of an ektara kind of sound and slowly the rhythm sneaks in and before you know what is happening the tune segues into a full blown reggae rhythm…and from somewhere else comes the harmonica…breathes in a tune for a few seconds…and the song begins with Ramana Gogula’s vocals… just lovely…! I thought that the first song is a sample Reggae song and that there would be many more ‘kinds’ of music that this album stores…I was wrong…the album is soaked with Reggae rhythms…at least 5 songs are infused with Reggae and this was for me the first non-Bob Marley album that had so much hypnotic Reggae rhythm…and that too an Indian music album…! There are other kinds of music also…for once you some kind of a European folk song (which I learnt later, was a Bulgarian folk song), and one also gets to hear 3 straightforward instrumental renditions…with lots of Indian classical sounds… and this album also brings in Telugu lyrics …the first song ‘Aye Laila’ is reprised as ‘Aye Pilla’ with Telugu lines replacing the Hindi ones…

And this album so fascinated me that I’d have presented copies to at least 6-7 friends on their birthdays…and they were more than pleased to listen to such refreshing ‘Indian’ music…but the saddest part was this remained their one and only album so far and I don’t see any hope of a second…and therefore, it is also one of a kind musical treat… search online and you find the album somewhere…and you will not regret listening to Misty Rhythms…

Camlin Trinity Fountain Pen-a handsome pen

I had written in one of my earlier posts that I had visited this town called Malappuram in Kerala …and the most pleasant surprise was finding a Camlin Trinity fountain pen on the first day of my visit itself…

Camlin is a long-standing pen and ink and other stationery manufacturing company in India and makes inexpensive fountain pens…and for most of us the first fountain pen that we got to use was usually Camlin…and many of us also have lots of memories of our first Camlin FPs…

I had seen a photo of Trinity pen in the Camlin website and from among the fountain pens featured in the website, this was the most good looking and the most expensive (Rs.70/-; around 1½ dollars) (of course, I didn’t know that Camlin had already brought out their signature pen called ‘SD’ in honour of their founder Sharad Dandekar which costs Rs.600). I couldn’t find this pen in the big pen stores that I usually visit in Hyderabad, and therefore it was a nice surprise to see this pen in Malappuram. It must have been a left-over pen or a never-bought pen because of its price considering the size of the town. Anyway, I bought this pen and the pen looked really good for its price. And the cardboard box in which it was housed said, ‘FIRST TIME IN INDIA: 3-IN-1 INK FILLING MECHANISM.’ Ink can be filled through a convertor (comes along with the pen), or a cartridge can be used or the pen can also be used as an eye . This could be the reason why it is called ‘Trinity.’

Looks-wise and considering its cost, the Trinity looks really good with a brushed steel cap and a black plastic body. Cost-wise, I would grab the pen just as I did as soon as I saw it. The most interesting part is the clip, which is gold coloured and not very wide. The clip originates from the centre of the upwardly tapering cap and kind of flows down till just above the company and model name engraved at the cap lip…like a tuft of hair flowing down from the top of a shaven head…the name Camlin and TRINITY are engraved at the cap lip.

Once the pen is uncapped, you see gold coloured trimmings at the neck of the section…and a gold coloured nib…the nib doesn’t have a hole (kind of an 'eyeless' nib...I got this tip from a fellow FP enthusiast on FPN) , though there is a faint circular indentation at the end of the slit on the nib…the nib itself is smallish and is curved on both sides half embracing the feeder…only half of the feeder can be seen and it has got horizontal fins running around the feeder (this kind of feeder has a technical name, I am sure). A gold coloured ring forms the border between the section and the barrel…this ring is not fixed, and therefore comes loose whenever the barrel is opened. The pen has a snap cap. It is 5 ½ inches capped; close to 6 inches posted; and close to 4 ½ inches uncapped.

I filled the convertor with Sheaffer Skrip Black ink. The nib is tipped ‘fine’ and lays down a fine wet line while writing with a hint of writing whisper. The nib is not ‘butter’ smooth, but is not scratchy either. The flow is smooth and looks like the feeder is functioning well. I wouldn’t take back points for lack of ‘butter’ smoothness. It is a really good, inexpensive and handsome pen for everyday use...

Celluloid Dreams...

This happens to only addicts…when you need that regular dose for that periodic high…ha ha ha…what to do? I’ve been angling for a marbled celluloid FP for a long time…I saw these pens at Deccan Pen Stores in Hyderabad, but what they showed me were all with gold nibs and I couldn’t afford them…I then asked for steel nib celluloid FPs and there was a lot of dilly dallying…and ‘no stocks now’… and ‘will let you know’…and so on and so forth…and one day, I was in Abids, and had no business with Deccan Pen Stores and buying FPs was not even a speck of thought on my mental horizon…without my knowledge, my feet led me to the shop and I kind of lazily shuffled around…and suddenly remembered my marbled celluloid longing and shakily asked Mr Wasim if he could offer me a steel nib celluloid…he gave me a smile and a laugh and took out a pen case and offered me a beautiful red marbled celluloid FP…a Leader…he said the clip and band were gold filled…the pen is so beautiful that I felt strange emotions…honestly…the marbling, and the different effects at different light angles…I had to have this pen…I immediately decided to own this one…Mr Wasim then took out another pen…a marbled gray Brahmam…what was happening? I had asked for one and was now getting two…and the clip and band were not gold filled, and so the pen was within my range…I couldn’t resist…the addict was getting excited…two shots…I was beginning to float…and then, Mr Wasim took out another celluloid FP…a marbled green celluloid similar to the marbled red…a Leader…I was going bonkers…I would hit the roof anytime now…I was kind of mentally paralysed…I couldn’t even calculate how much money I had in my account and whether I could afford all three…reason went for a toss…my ‘celluloid’ dreams were coming true in the most unexpected manner… But reason triumphed…only for a brief while though…I could afford to buy the red and the gray pens, without seriously compromising my wallet…and I bought them, with my heart and mind still stuck on the green that I was leaving behind…I felt I was leaving something personal and precious behind…and I knew that I’d come back to claim it…and it was soon enough…and this ‘soon enough’ happened soon enough because through sheer luck, I got some unexpected money for some extra job that I did at my college, just about enough to pay for the green and claim it…and I acted frantically, calling up the Secunderabad branch of Deccan Pen Stores and asking them to get in touch with the Abids branch to get the green over to Secunderabad, so that I could pick it up on my way back home from college…within two days, I had the green also with me…it was then that I could breathe easily…